Garrett M. Vonk

Here are a few things I’m excited about this fall…

• Halo 3 - Duh. After playing the multiplayer beta and following every tiny tidbit of Halo news I could find on X3F, the most anticipated video game of all time is pretty high on my list. I even violated two of my self-imposed rules by A) pre-ordering the game at B) EB Games, but I don’t care. Come September 25th, I’ll be right there in line with the teenagers waiting to unwrap my cat helmet and play all night. Also–I have a Halo 3 party planned with several friends that night. I’m obsessed.
• Trip to Reno/California - Heather and I are heading to Northern California in October to visit my grandparents out there and do a little sightseeing. We happened to find a great price on a flight through Reno, so we’ll probably spend a day in Lake Tahoe, as well.
• Futurama - As far as I can tell, Futurama will be back on TV toward the end of this year or early 2008. It can’t come quickly enough for me. Yes, I saw the Simpsons movie, and it was great, but I’m at least equally excited for new Futurama after all of these years of repeats on Adult Swim.

We saw The Da Vinci Code on Saturday, in a rare visit to the cinema that we are usually so loath to undertake. (I think this was the first time we’d been to the movies at all since we got our HDTV)

All in all, it was not a terrible movie, in my opinion. I was happy that it was fairly faithful to the book, and that the cast didn’t screw any of the characters up in a major way. In all, it was still a little disappointing because I felt like the movie lacked the spirit of the book, the breathless puzzle-solving and conspiracy-uncovering. It felt more like the cast was going through the motions. I’m not even going to bring up “the controversy” because that’s just stupid.

We’ve had gorgeous weather this week, and I was looking forward to the weather this weekend as well. Until, of course, I pull up the weather on Google:

I normally am a big fan of rain, but I was hoping for a decent weekend.

(Speaking of which, Google Weather is simple and fast. Just type weather and your zip code in the search bar, like “weather 90210” and it’ll bring back a simple 5-day forecast without navigating through a nightmare of ads and clicks on weather.com.)

We’re having a big move at the office; I am told that nearly everyone here will be moving to another desk, floor, office, etc. My team is moving up to the tenth floor from the fourth. They make it as painless as possible a process, but I bet I’ll still go to my old desk a half dozen times before I get the hang of it.

Sahara
I am really excited about Sahara, which comes out 2 weeks from today. My enjoyment of the entire collection of Clive Cussler’s work was fostered by the fact that my dad and I read them together starting when I was 10 or so. Throughout the years, we’ve enjoyed the books as we passed them back and forth, and Sahara was one of my favorites, though I barely remember the plot. I’ll have to get my hands on a copy and reread it before I see the movie. (Though perhaps I should forget about the book’s plot; apparently Cussler is quite upset at the final script and is suing the producer of the movie.)

Well, this week should be a little shorter… Where do the weekends go? Heather and I sit down for a few hours on the sofa and boom, it’s Sunday night.

We saw two movies this weekend, though, because we’ve been getting behind on movies we want to see. National Treasure on Friday, and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason Sunday night.

Nicolas Cage was his whiney self, but National Treasure was pretty well-done. Jerry Bruckheimer clains that they started working on this movie 8 years ago, and it is thus NOT a Da Vinci Code Ripoff, but I’m not convinced. It was the Dan Brown Formula, or at least the one used in Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they had the idea first, but the globe-trotting, clue-finding pace and pattern were ripped off. That said, good flick.

Bridget Jones lacked a good bit of the charm of the first, but was watchable and interesting. All in all, a good movie weekend.

We played racquetball today for the first time in a few years. I forgot how much fun the sport is. Hopefully we can play some more while we live somewhere with courts.

Being a big-time loser, I am very excited about the Matrix movies coming out next year. There’s a teaser-style trailer just put up and now that I’ve played it a few times, I’m even more excited. At least as, if not more, excited than I am for SW:AOTC, which should be out now…

The movie Cannibal: The Musical or Alferd Packer: The Musical. I have to say, the picture has the amateur charm of a really good indy flick, but there’s something else there too. Trey Parker and Matt Stone (of South Park fame) really do musicals right. I mean, they did this in college. $125,000 budget notwithstanding, to have the kind of creativity and patience to create a feature-length film while in college is pretty amazing.